Travels with the Winnie: Day 79

A day in Broken Hill

Yesterday was a day of art galleries. We started out with the Pro Hart Gallery. Not an artist that I have thought much about, though when reminded of some of his antics (dropping paint powder onto Ayers Rock, putting paint onto carpet and smoothing it out with his belly), I remembered those. But, seeing the artist in context has left a very different impression. His output was prodigious, and when you consider that he was working in the mines from the age of 19 to 40, he must have had incredible energy.

He remained living in Broken Hill and joined a group of other local artists in promoting the local landscape and people. He was a devoted family man (and I think this also swayed me), and when he became famous and had exhibitions and was meeting important people he always took his wife and five kids with him. We watched a video on various documentaries that gave us insight into his life. The gallery is full of his artwork which the family wants to keep. Understanding his work as social and spiritual commentary made a difference to how I viewed it. Although he did not want to be thought of as a landscape artist, the landscape elements of his paintings also appeal to me.

Our next stop was back in town. We parked the Winnie near to the Cinema, had lunch at the ‘Silly Goat’ cafe, then walked to the gallery housing ‘The Big Picture” by another local artist, Peter Anderson. It is a huge diorama style painting in bright colours of all the local area in the round. Quite breathtaking. There was quite a lot of other artwork on sale in the gallery.

Stephen was then ready for a third gallery, but I chose to have a rest in the van.

At about 5.00 p.m. we went to the Cinema to see ‘Dunkirk’. We wanted to see the film on the big screen, and thought it would probably be off by the time we get back to Perth. It was definitely worth seeing, although I am not sure we saw it in its full glory of 77mm. They had downloaded it via satellite. There were quite a few other people there, so I hope they were able to make a profit.

I only took a few photos today. The town has attractive old style buildings, and some newer public buildings with a great deal of style, and ‘next time’ it would be worthwhile to walk around town capturing these elements. There are a lot of older style homes as well, including many corrugated iron houses that people still live in.

towersexample of older building style, fairly typical of buildings in Austalian towns and cities

Today we are leaving this caravan park, but not leaving the area as we want to explore Silverton and also see some outdoor sculptures which are out of town.